The Book Bar

Over the past summer a number of Vestal Designers lived in the same house, a 70s-era ranch west of Palo Alto. As it was on a golf course, and had an actual vineyard attached, we referred to affectionately as "The Vineyard" and had a lot of social gatherings there.

One of our non-Vestal housemates worked at the Stanford library, and his job included the task of throwing away old books, which apparently the other librarians couldn't bear to do. We decided to rescue these books from that awful fate - and what better use for them than a bar from which to entertain our frequent guests?

You can't see Mike, but he's in there. He lost rock, paper, scissors. Two out of three.

Might as well get some reading in.

We (read: he) had to dig through trash to get to the books.

Things got a bit dusty. Ugh.

Alfonso transfers books to his trusty Volvo station wagon. A better cargo vehicle than Mike's convertible.

Ready to go.

I am daunted by the task. I indicate this subtly by my posture.

The whole house turns out to help haul. Whoa, deja-vu... isn't this a scene from Where's Waldo?

What a thespian.

Construction begins.

I don't care! I'd rather drown in books than call Brad for help!

Work stalls as we realize we need more books.

We get more books. Work continues.

Not sure what's happening here but it looks done!

I woke up early to get to work again, and had a nice glass of orange juice.

Some salvaged particle board makes a nice countertop, but the wood color is out of place.

Brett has a great idea.

Just wait, you'll see.

Yeah, that's right. Uh huh.

And progress! At this point the rest of us lost focus, but Brett kept on going.

He slaved away through the night.

And when it was done, he celebrated alone. Kidding.

Just in time for a party that weekend. Jon is afraid of cameras so he's closing his eyes.

Brett with a baleful look in his eyes, Jeff doing God knows what.

Jon still hasn't opened his eyes.

Even Mike Kai of HarvardSucks.org came to celebrate. By now I've probably lost your attention.

In any case, the books were not damaged at all in construction (except for the ones we surfaced the countertop with), as we didn't use any fasteners. We threaded sheets of paper between books but used no glue. So if anyone discovers there's a desperate shortage of journals on endocrinology and virology, drop us a line.